


A Punishing Business

by callmelyss



Series: A Man Cannot Outrun Himself [1]
Category: Man and Boy - Rattigan, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Little Stranger (2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Basil is Trying His Best, Blood, Doctor Faraday Is Not Nice, Eeriness, Gothic, Historical, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Manipulation, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Redemption Via A Sound Dicking, Rough Sex, Sick Fic, Unhealthy Relationships, kylux adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 12:17:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmelyss/pseuds/callmelyss
Summary: The man is still at the bar as Basil approaches. He sticks out even more in his brown suit, conspicuous among the bright colors, looking as apart, as mismatched to this place as anyone could, his expression flat, almost dour, eyes chilly, close-cropped hair rust-red in the watery light. He has a thin, solemn face and sallow features sharp enough to cut. A full mustache sits, meticulously sculpted, as though carved, on his upper lip. Something aggressive, insistent about that, assertingyes, this is my face, the face of a serious man, to be taken seriously.—The son of a disgraced businessman and an English country doctor meet in Greenwich Village in 1949.





	A Punishing Business

**Author's Note:**

> For [icicaille](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icicaille/pseuds/icicaille)!
> 
> Basil, if you're unfamiliar, is from the play _Man and Boy_. You can read a short synopsis of it [here](https://www.samuelfrench.co.uk/p/8895/man-and-boy). And watch some clips [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b-P891RIqg).
> 
>  **Edit** : I also caved and wrote a more detailed synopsis [here](https://callmelyss.dreamwidth.org/5181.html), in case anyone finds that helpful. 
> 
> I've added a few explanations about the tags (particularly about the implied/reference suicide and the homophobia) in the end notes, so if you have concerns about them, please check them out or get in touch.

Summer comes restless to the city that year. The spring air congeals, pressing down between the buildings, heat descending like a fog over the streets, and with it: uneasiness. It’s not the previous anxiety, the wartime fears—scarcity, bombs and planes falling from the sky, sons who never come home. No, this is a different sort of panic, a localized disquiet. A low hum vibrates in metal and concrete and bone, the kind you can only hear when you listen, the sharpness it brings to a loved one’s voice, the sullen malevolence of the heat, snapping in sudden bursts of hatred, violence.  

The city is by definition, never an easy place, never a quiet place. Even in the Village, well south of the busier avenues, Basil hears the blast of car horns and the machine-gun clatter of harsh laughter at three a.m., and the couple next door is always shouting midday when he’s trying to sleep, having played all night. But those sounds, that energy, the daily cacophony, all possess a certain predictability, familiar as a well-worn shirt, as the smooth ivory keys under his fingers, as the skyline itself. He recognizes it, belongs to it, in the same way the millions of other souls sharing this crowded little island do. It’s theirs, and it’s them.

 _This_ , this feels like something else entirely, like something encroaching on the world he knows, something starving, furious, grasping.

Of course, the summer will end for him, as all summers have since ’34, with the anniversary of his father’s death. Some years, that day ambushes him like a stranger menacing him in the street. Sometimes it approaches him like a friend, sober-eyed, understanding. But he always feels it when the weather begins to turn, a stain on the calendar, no matter how much time passes. The night Gregor came to him, he had thought, for shelter, for assistance in his time of need. The night he used him as shabbily as he ever had, all but whoring him out to stabilize a business deal. The night he died with a pistol in his hand.

Three months before that day, when the summer is still sticky-new, Basil sleeps late—he fell into bed, finally, around five a.m.—and wakes groggy, stumbling around for coffee and clothes and a sandwich of cold roast beef and sauerkraut before making his way to his next gig. He hasn’t lacked for work after the war; more clubs are opening all the time, and they all need competent musicians. He plays all the old standards and all the new hits and whatever’s earning ovations on Broadway. He plays for crooners and bands and all by his lonesome. He plays the lunch hours and the dinner hours and until the very last dance.

Sometimes, in the smaller places, he sneaks in one of his long-neglected compositions, but no one ever notices. No one approaches him and asks, hush-voiced, “What was that song? I just loved it.” Publishers have bought a handful over the years, one for a radio ad, but never enough to pay the rent. He plays other people’s music and writes his own in the hours between. When he’s not working, he sits in his studio and sips gin and listens to the radio and tries not to think of times long past. Of Gregor. Of Carol, gone to California. Of his once naïve assurance that the world would change.

It never did, of course; the great machine grinds on and on, implacable, and he turns with it, another hapless cog. So it went; so it goes.

He does his best to shake off his melancholy, his jittering preoccupation, as he leaves his flat. Ducks out into the warm night, into the wet bright lights of the city. It’s nothing, of course. Just a fleeting mood.

Tonight, he plays at The Pink Slipper, a tattered little dive with a scuffed bar and a dusty back mirror and pictures of dead starlets on the wall. It doesn’t fit more than fifty people at a time. The tips are bad; the pay is worse. But it’s right around the corner from his flat, caters to the unconventional set that’s coming back into the Village, a trickle at first, now more and more of them: dreamy, patchwork artists and moth-eaten intellectuals and strident, opinionated students, the kind who pass out hand-printed pamphlets. He recognizes them, the same types with different faces and new clothes, but they’re his people, even now, and he likes to be among them, despite the haze of stale cigarette smoke and the press of unwashed bodies.

And best of all, he doesn’t have to wear a dinner jacket.

Basil ducks through the crowd, nods at Lloyd behind the bar, and takes his place at the rickety upright in the corner. Its keys yellowed years ago, and it lacks a D2-sharp, the space gaping like a lost tooth, but he can coax a decent song out of it still. Drums out the opening notes of “C’est si bon.” They’ll let him play anything here; sometimes he uses the time to practice, sometimes to try out new material.

He studies the wall as he plays, as he often does, row upon row of black-and-white photographs, the familiar-unfamiliar faces of ambitious young women, their desperate smiles. That’s where he sees him first, or his reflection: a thin man, standing stock-still by the bar, a single point of inactivity in all the motion. Couples are milling about, people are leaning over to order drinks, are shifting as they talk all around him. He's like a doleful shade, trapped in the smile of some long-forgotten ingenue. Basil watches him. His earlier agitation pricks through him again, the hairs standing up on his forearms, the back of his neck. He almost loses the cadence of the song, melody not quite stuttering, but his fingers find the notes. 

It passes. He keeps playing. He shakes his head. Nothing. It was nothing.

He takes his break, as always, after the third hour. Heads over to the bar for a drink, greets a few regulars, people he knows from the neighborhood. Miss Irene, a Village institution, towering in her heels, kisses him on the cheek, probably leaving a fuchsia smear. 

The man is still at the bar as Basil approaches. He sticks out even more in his brown suit, conspicuous among the bright colors, looking as apart, as mismatched to this place as anyone could, his expression flat, almost dour, eyes chilly, close-cropped hair rust-red in the watery light. He has a thin, solemn face and sallow features sharp enough to cut. A full mustache sits, meticulously sculpted, as though carved, on his upper lip. Something aggressive, insistent about that, asserting _yes, this is my face, the face of a serious man, to be taken seriously._  

Basil only nods to him before waving at Lloyd, a request for the usual. To his surprise, the man approaches him, moves to stand next to him by the bar, although he doesn’t relax against it. Back ramrod straight.

“One doesn’t expect live music at these sorts of places.” His voice is as stiff as his spine, all posh vowels and crisp consonants. Overly so. An affect, perhaps. He wouldn’t be alone in that in this city—or in this neighborhood. “Usually it’s records. Or the radio.”

“I’m only here on Thursdays,” he explains. “There’s a band on the weekends, I think.” He wouldn’t know; he’s always working elsewhere then. Usually Café Society.

“I see,” he says. As though this clarifies everything. Then: “You play very well.”

“Thank you.”

They lapse into silence after that. Not comfortable. Both of them looking out into the crowd. Basil accepts his gin from Lloyd. “Cheers,” he says and tosses back the oily liquor, the accustomed burn gliding down his throat. 

His stoic, companion raises his own glass, something amber-colored. Whiskey, maybe, or brandy, although the brandy here is notoriously terrible. He takes a sip, grimaces. “Forgive me, but your accent?” 

And it must sound especially queer to an Englishman, his garbled muddle of Oxford, Paris, Bucharest, and New York. He’s never been able to shake any of them. Lucky, in a way, he didn’t know his mother well, or there’d be Berlin to contend with, too. “I was educated in England. Partly raised there. All over Europe, really. Most people here just assume I’m English.”

“It’s—unusual. So you’re—“

“Romanian, originally,” Basil volunteers. Not sure _why_ he does, but there’s no harm it, certainly. Just another stranger at another bar. He’ll have forgotten his face by morning, even if his eyes are an unusual green, even if he’s watching him, surprisingly intent, as he speaks. “But I’m American through and through.” _By choice_ , he doesn’t add, but the man seems to hear it.

“Ah, of course. The famous nation of immigrants.” He shifts next to Basil, nothing friendly about his posture, although their elbows are almost touching. “This city in particular.”

“A city of runaways,” he suggests. Thinking of his own flight here when he was eighteen. He doesn’t mean for it to come out so darkly, doesn’t mean to say it aloud at all. But the arrival of summer affects him so sometimes. It’s always felt wrong that the weather should be warm when he feels this way. Grief should belong to the cold, to the winter.

He surprises him again by staying, “Understandable.” And something flickers in his eyes, indefinite but raw. He coughs and looks away. Takes another drink. Coughs in earnest now, choking on the cheap booze.

Basil pats him on the back, an automatic gesture; the man startles, twitching away from the unexpected touch.

“Sorry.” He withdraws his fingers from between those narrow shoulders. “What brings you here, Mr.—?”

“Doctor,” he corrects. Automatically, Basil thinks. Both a habit and a point of pride. “Faraday.” He extends his hand, unnecessarily formal.

“Basil. Basil Anthony.” He shakes it. Faraday’s hand is thin and hard in his. Behind the bar, Lloyd is looking at his watch, pointed. He nods. “Well, back to work for me. Nice to meet you.”

“A pleasure.”

“Is there anything you’d like to hear?” He couldn’t say what brings him to ask. He rarely takes requests.

“I haven’t a clue about music, I’m afraid.” Faraday grimaces again. Adds, self-deprecatingly: “Unless you know any quaint English country dances.”

“I’ll think of something,” Basil reassures him. “You know, I doubt these kids have ever heard a waltz. Could be good for them.” Smiles.

It’s not much, the slightest upturn of his lips under the mustache, maybe a flash of tooth, but it counts. Then he falters, gaze dipping. “Er, you have something. Right here.” He brushes his cheek with one fingertip, just the ghost of a touch.

The lipstick. Right. He grabs a cocktail napkin and scrubs it away. Smiles back. “Thanks.”

 

* * *

  

Basil doesn’t forget Faraday’s face by morning, not his shadowed eyes or the taut line of his mouth or the tenor of his voice. It’s been a long time since he’s spoken with anyone new. He has his friends, people who know him around the neighborhood and have for years, but he can’t recall the last time he said anything personal to any of them either; they’re more apt to discuss politics: the Chinese Revolution, the atrocities in Eastern Europe, Truman. He’s grown used to withholding the details of his life, an effect of being Gregor’s son. It felt almost _risky_ , even uttering those few words about himself. Like he revealed too much. Left himself open, unprotected.

But it hardly matters. He won’t see him again. You don’t _see_ people again, not by happenstance, not in this city of constant comings and goings. Easy to lose even the ones you’re watching, the ones you mean to hold onto, much as you try.

Impossible, then, that he should find Faraday in Washington Square Park two days after he sees him at The Pink Slipper.

He avoided the park, those first years after Gregor died. He would catch a glimpse of a man in a suit and overcoat sitting on one of the benches, and his pulse would stutter, and he would think, all over again, of that night, when his father came to him in desperation. How he had sent Basil away at the end of it, the lie of that, what he meant to do. Maybe he had thought he was sparing his tender-hearted son; maybe he justified it to himself that way. Like it wasn’t more _management._ His insistence everything be a particular way, even as his last act.

Basil crosses the park without a thought most days now, un-haunted, especially if he hurries. It’s only a familiar flash of red that draws his eye, sunlight catching copper, and makes him pause. There’s Faraday, in his suit, on a park bench, legs crossed at the knee, reading the _Times_. He looks up, feeling, perhaps, Basil’s eyes on him. His own crinkle at the corners when he recognizes him. “The pianist,” he declares and stands. “Basil, yes?”

“That’s right.” He smiles. “Hello, Doctor Faraday.”

“Just Faraday is—fine.” His head bobs. “But forgive me. You were on your way somewhere.”

“Not at all,” Basil says. “Please.” He’s walking back from the subway, having played the lunch hour at Clyde’s in midtown. Mostly sour-faced old ladies in fur stoles, gossiping over soup and croquettes. The doctor laughs when he tells him this. It’s a clipped sound, tight, restrained, the way he seems to be generally, but not insincere. 

He tucks his paper under his arm, falling into step with Basil. “The glamorous life of a musician, I take it?”

He chuckles. “Something like that.”

“A doctor’s life isn’t either,” Faraday confides. “Glamorous, I mean. At least, a country doctor’s isn’t.”

“Is that where you practice? In the country?” He tilts his head, watching him. Still formal, but less uncomfortable than he had been before.

 _What brought him to The Pink Slipper, I wonder_. Bohemian bars have a particular reputation, after all. The Village itself does, of course. 

“Warwickshire. Do you know it?”

“That’s north of Oxford, isn’t it? Lovely country.” 

“That’s right.” Excitement tinges his voice. “It’s beautiful. Although they’re developing the old estates now. Affordable housing.” He says this last with particular warmth—and disdain. A glimmer of anger.

“What brings you here all the way from Warwickshire?” Basil asks. “You never said, the other night. Business? Pleasure?” 

Faraday hesitates, a look he can’t quite read passing over his features. It’s eerily blank for a moment. “Pleasure, I suppose.” His mustache twitches. “That is, I’m not here for medicine.”

“Holiday?”

“Of a kind. I’m on leave for the summer.” And that expression he _does_ recognize from the night before: pinched, the line of his lips going white, forehead puckering. “A—a friend of mine. Well, more than a friend. Or I had thought. Not that it matters, she. Well, she died, not long ago. And she meant to come here, she had said so. I thought I should. They told me to take some time, afterward.“ He shrugs, cutting himself off, voice thick, hands clenching, ears red. “It’s been difficult, these past months.”

“I’m so sorry.” Basil reaches to squeeze his arm, to offer comfort. Recalls his reaction to being touched the other night. Takes in his closed expression now. Drops his hand.

Faraday shakes his head. Face faintly pink, too. “No, my apologies. It’s not the sort of thing you should tell someone you’ve just met, I realize.” His jaw clicks, audibly, and there’s a brightness to his eyes, a brittleness, too, like cracking ice.

He does touch him now, a hand on his elbow, fleeting, and Faraday leans into the contact, Basil’s certain, before he lets go. “Think nothing of it.” 

“Women,” he mutters, as they resume walking. Bares his teeth. “They’ll ruin you if they can.”

Basil doesn’t respond, thinking of Carol. She’d done anything but ruin him. Had looked after him—after Gregor. Wanted him to go with her to Los Angeles, before the war. Wrote to him for years, telling him about the small roles she’d earned, background parts: best friends, secretaries, waitresses. Wrote, too, to tell him when she married a carpenter, a set builder, in ’42. And after that, about babies and the California coast and warm nights. Asked after him, his health, and his music. She’d lost track of him during the war, as many did. Possible she was still writing him, despite his silence.

She had always loved him so well, too well, despite his silences.

 _Women_ , he could say. _They’ll save you if they can._

They arrive at the edge of the park together and linger on the corner. “My flat is that way,” he gestures.

“I’m staying at a boarding house,” Faraday volunteers. “Just over there.” On the corner of the park.

“Perhaps I’ll see you around, then.” He doesn’t know if he wants to—feels both drawn to him and repulsed. There’s something earnest about him. Something discordant, too.

“I do hope so.” That shy smile. Genuine. The rumple of acrimony gone again. His face clear, almost kind. “Good afternoon, Basil.”

 

* * *

 

And he can admit that he looks for Faraday after that, on the street, in the park, in the market on Monday morning. Looks for him, too, at The Pink Slipper the next time Thursday comes around. Finds him, once more, at the bar, drink in hand, and looking as discomfited as he had the first time. He raises his glass when he sees Basil walk in. He gives a small wave in answer, navigating the crowd and haze on his way to the piano. 

Basil plays a lively set, a rare energy hitting him. He never puts much into the performances at this sort of venue. The music is usually background noise, but tonight a few couples make tight turns between the tables. Young people, mainly, although he catches a gray-haired poetess jaunting with a philosophy professor from the university. A pair of women, both in New Look slacks and blouses, laugh and clutch each other near him, twirling one another in small circles.

The last notes of “Younger Than Springtime” hang in the air as he gets up for his break, stretching his back, cracking his fingers, his neck. 

He takes the spot next to Faraday at the bar; no one seems eager to stand near him, although it’s a busy enough night. The doctor inclines his head in greeting. He’s watching the women who were dancing. May also be studying a pair of young men next to them, equally intertwined. His face as blank as paper. He shakes himself and turns away.

“Does it bother you?” Basil asks, curious. He expects it would.

“Not as such,” he replies. Although his voice sounds tense, coiled. His eyes glisten with unexpressed feeling. “Is that—very common here?”

“More common here than most places.” And getting more so, more free-thinking young people arriving in the Village every week. Writers, scholars, artists.

For the most part, he doesn’t involve himself with them. He’s at an awkward age for it, men or women. Too old and jaded to sway with a new lover in his arms, too young and poor for any of them to flock to him, hoping for help or favors. 

Not that he wants that.

He still wonders, on occasion, if his father had known about his inclinations when he set up that ruse in ’34, casting his own son as a kept lover. If that was an entry on one of his dossiers: _sometimes fucks men, sometimes gets fucked by them_. Probably it wouldn’t have surprised Gregor. It would only be another liability, another reason he was _soft_ , not strong, and never would be. Perhaps it didn’t matter—if he had known. He doubts it would have changed his mind about his schemes if he had. And Basil had forgiven him anyway, as Gregor had undoubtedly known he would. Just as he had forgiven the lies and scams and avarice and even, eventually, ultimately, the gun.

Faraday is watching him closely, brows furrowed. “What is it?” he asks. 

“Nothing,” Basil assures him. “Just a memory.”

“Oh,” he remarks, stiffly. Although there’s sympathy in his face, as he adds, “Happier to forget sometimes, isn't it?”

“Yes,” he confirms. And drinks. 

They stand in silence after that, although it’s companionable, not uncomfortable, not as it had been the first night. “They’re so very young,” Faraday says, finally, of the crowd. The women. The men.

“They get younger every year.” Basil shakes his head, displacing the gray feeling that's settled over him. It’s not the same as his disquiet, which comes and goes now. Is softer. Sadder. He manages a smile. “Or most of them do.” The light gleams on one man’s bald pate. “The city’s still shiny and new to them. The world hasn’t worn them down yet.”

He would have disliked hearing such a thing once, how tired it sounds. How cynical. But the doctor only nods, expression understanding. “Enviable.”

 

* * *

 

He grows accustomed to seeing Faraday in the weeks that follow. They walk in the park together regularly, as Basil is leaving for work, or, more often, when he’s coming home again. Sometimes when he arrives in the early hours of the morning, the twilight tremor of the city still running through him. If Faraday finds his timing unusual, he doesn’t let on, instead seems, well, _glad_ to see him, when he does. May simply be happy for someone to talk to, in this place where no one has time to talk.  

There’s no rhyme or reason to _his_ appearances either, although once he apologizes, after a lapse. _A sick boy at the boarding house_ , he explains, the next time they meet. And Basil wonders if he usually comes at specific times. If he waits.

No one’s waited for him in a very long time.

They talk about fleeting concerns: the news, music, theater, books, science. He learns more about advances in modern medicine than he ever expected to know. Eventually, personal matters creep into their conversations. Basil tells him, a little, about Gregor. The parts he _can_ tell, that don’t still bring a knot to his throat. What he knows about his empire, the businesses he built, the roads in Yugoslavia. How powerful he’d seemed. How untouchable. How appealing his mythology. It’s easier to say, in some ways, now that he’s gone. He never could have admitted to it when he was alive, who his father was. Never did.

And Faraday, instead of leaving him twisting, bruised, exposed to the summer heat and the city’s hard edges, speaks of his mother, who had been a servant at one of the old estates. He describes the house, too, a peculiar, manic gleam coming into his eyes as he does. But maybe, Basil thinks, he looks the same telling his own stories, the ones he’s repeated to himself over and over until his tongue has wearied of pronouncing the same words. The ones he can’t stop telling, even though they've ended.

They don’t talk about her again, the dead woman Faraday knew, who intended to come to America, who wounded him in some way; and Basil doesn’t mention Carol, feeling protective of her, more so than he does his own history. Nor do they discuss the young people in The Pink Slipper. Or the ones sitting and laughing under the trees in Washington Square Park. Although he sees Faraday watching them sometimes, that unreadable look in his eyes. Like yearning. Envy. 

“Where did you serve?” Faraday asks one afternoon. They’ve already completed a circuit of the park, and he’s just finished describing his own experience, the horrors of medicine in wartime, how they continued afterward, what can be done about it, the discoveries he’s made.

“I didn’t,” Basil says. Explains: “Conscientious objector.”

He went to jail for it, for a time, before he agreed to non-combative service. Spent the rest of the war changing beds at Bellevue.

“Religious?” The slight quirk of his eyebrow indicates he thinks not.

“Pacifist.” He doesn’t avoid his eyes. Has never been ashamed of it.

“Ah.” And there’s that small smile again, full lips curving under his mustache.“An idealist.”

“Of a kind,” Basil agrees. “Or I was.”

“Lost your taste for it?”

“Not exactly.” He shrugs. “I still believe there’s a better system, that capitalism is an illness infecting society. But it’s proved more resilient than I and others had hoped.” He had been sure, so sure once, that the haves of the world would falter and the have-nots would finally find prosperity. And he had personally, too personally, seen the men at the top of the machine fall, dark stains blossoming on the bedroom wallpaper, but he hadn’t understood, then, that there would always be others to take their places. Make firm their empires. Or build new ones.

“The Revolution may yet come, is it? I confess I’m surprised: I didn’t think they much tolerated your type here. Red scares and rounding up intellectuals and all that.”

Pigeons scatter in front of them on the path.

“I’m not a Marxist,” Basil insists, as he has so many times. He hasn’t had to defend his beliefs in some time, but they're ready on his tongue, the same answers, as ready as they’d been for Carol so many times and for Gregor on that particular night. “You don’t approve, I take it.”

Faraday grunts, noncommittal. “I prefer order,” he acknowledges. He leans, just slightly, towards Basil as he speaks. His eyes are quite green in the filmy sunlight. Fervent. His lower lip is trembling. “There’s a beauty to it, a system being run properly and everything in its place.”

And that’s what it is: _zeal_.

“But you’ve never chafed under it, the rigidity of it? Your class system is even worse than ours.” His cheeks are warming, although they’re not walking quickly. It isn’t exertion that’s making his pulse trip or the old enthusiasm come back into his voice, cobwebs shed. “You never wanted to question—why _these_ people and not me? What merit do they possess that I lack? Don’t I deserve an equal chance?”

“I didn’t say that,” Faraday snaps. "Of course I have." Too fast, too loud. His eyes flash, the briefest flicker of temper that Basil’s begun to recognize. “But what do we destroy when we do away with it all? When we—“ his voice twists, his lip curling, baring an eyetooth “— _modernize_. At what cost convenience?”

This last question echoes, and he coughs, embarrassed by his own outburst. Waiting, too, perhaps, for Basil to mock him; he’s often waiting for that, it seems, expecting it. Ridicule. 

“It’s not just convenience,” he says, gently as he can. “Freedom. Life. Happiness.”

Faraday relaxes at his tone, the trepidation and vehemence leaving his face. “You _are_ an American,” he accuses, sounding betrayed. Also joking, Basil can see. Dry. Sheepish, as he often is, at having done so. And maybe it’s odd to find that diffidence charming, the wincing around his eyes, the furrow between his brows but— 

Basil clears his throat. Looks away. Checks his watch. He’s lost track. Much longer and he’ll be late for the dinner hour. “I ought to go,” he says.

The doctor withdraws, putting space between them. “Oh, of course. Goodbye, then, Basil.”

He’s still flushed as he jogs down the subway steps. Not only from the debate, he knows. He hasn’t, he thinks, imagined it: Faraday’s increasing proximity. The way he moves closer to talk to him. The occasional brush of his arm. And no denying that he looks _glad_  to see him each time, that he lights up during conversation, eager.

But no, it must be nothing. Just one lonely foreigner meeting another, the collision of bodies in the city’s endless pulse. He watches the blur of faces in the train’s windows, the crowd streaking by, ash-gray.

 

* * *

 

The next time Basil plays at The Pink Slipper, the sky’s roiling with dark clouds, the summer air closing thick, humid on his skin. His unease, the city’s unease, is back in force, the twitchy certainty that something is _not right_ , although perhaps it’s only that it hasn’t yet rained and badly needs to, a mercy in the heat. He’s sweat through his shirt before he reaches the bar, and its patrons aren’t in better shape, dark circles spreading between shoulders, under arms. Hair wilting, slipping, limp, out of pins and product. He grabs a cold beer from Lloyd before he starts his set. Peers into the crowd, looking for Faraday, even as he resolves not to look for Faraday. Doesn’t find him. 

 _Maybe my politics put him off_. 

 _Maybe it was rude, leaving that way_.

_Maybe it's for the best._

But he’s here to play and so he does, in defiance of the hot weather, rolling, thunderous through one song and then the next, pounding the keys, wringing as much sound as he can from the old instrument, ignoring the smattering of applause before diving into the next tune. No drowsy love songs tonight, no chipper musical theater dance numbers. He wants to feel the sound vibrating in his knees, wants to retreat into the music, still his best sanctuary after all these years.

He’s felt—stirred up, that is. That’s all. Like something is pressing close against the glass, looking in at him nights.

Basil’s hardly cognizant of those three hours passing, stops only as a matter of habit, the length of a set ground into some internal sense, _tick-tocking_ , steady, inexorable. He startles, looking up, catching Faraday’s face in the reflection of a photograph at eye level, his severe features captured in the glass before he’s there, next to him. “Here,” he says. Voice low in his ear. Hand brushing just between his shoulders. “You’re overheated. You should drink this.” 

It’s water, clear and cold, and he gulps it. “Thank you.”

Faraday takes the empty glass back. Hovers near him, shifting his weight from foot to foot, not subsiding into his customary stillness. His gaze flickers over Basil’s face, then the photographs, the piano, the floor, Basil’s face again. “I s-say,” he stammers, finally. “I hope I didn’t offend you the other—that is. I’m sorry if I did.”

“No offense taken,” he says. 

“Oh. Good.” And he does sound relieved. “I, ah. Rather enjoy talking with you.”

Basil blinks. It’s not just the ice water hitting his stomach now. “I do, too. Like talking to you. Very much.”

“I’m—glad to hear it.” Eyes still darting. Nostrils flaring. He gnaws his lower lip.

He can’t say, exactly, what possesses him, but he stands. Crowds Faraday, just slightly, against the wall. Not so much that they’re touching, not so much, even, that he couldn’t easily escape if he wanted to. Enough, maybe, that the doctor can feel, can appreciate, the breadth of his shoulders. The span of his hands. The inch or two of height he has on him. He’s pleased at the way his eyes darken, his pupils expand. The bob of his throat as he swallows. _Yes._

He’ll be gone, Basil knows, if he doesn’t say something. Every time he’s been here, he leaves before the end of the night, before he stops playing, around two a.m. It doesn’t matter if he goes. This isn’t—nothing is happening. He hasn’t been wanting this, these past weeks, more than he’s wanted anything in a long time.

“Maybe. Could I offer you a drink?” he asks. Allowing his voice to dip lower, rumbling. “After this?”

Faraday exhales. He’s sweating, too, at his hairline, down his neck. Still wearing a suit despite the weather. Probably he doesn’t own anything else. Basil tilts his forehead down, searching his eyes.

“I,” he says. Stumbling. “Yes. Please.”

 

* * *

 

They leave with the furtive exodus of patrons from The Pink Slipper at the end of the night, all of them dashing out through the rain, wielding pocketbooks and jackets and newspapers to keep off the downpour. Faraday offers to share his umbrella. “Well, I’m English,” he explains. “We expect the rain, you know.”

Still, they hurry out into the dark with the others, shoulders jostling. Moving quickly, lest this, whatever’s happening, the spell of it, should end with the storm. They splash across the street to Basil’s building, duck into the stairwell, slipping, not quite clutching each other for balance. He doesn’t know how much Faraday wants to be touched, and the doctor seems equally unsure of him, not daring more than a hand on his arm, a quick brush of shoulders.

He abandoned the basement apartment immediately following Gregor’s death. Couldn’t stand to stay there, not with the stains that wouldn’t come out of the wall, not with the press sniffing around. There have been other places since, all in the Village, all variations on the first. This latest apartment isn’t different: a sixth-floor studio with big windows and brick walls. An assortment of mismatched furniture. His bed behind the privacy screen in one corner, the kitchenette in the other, a small bathroom with a clawfoot tub off the big room. His piano, in the middle of it all, the only thing he’s ever bothered to keep.

He watches Faraday take the place in. _What cottage or garret room do you call home, I wonder_? “Whiskey?” he offers, after a beat.

“Please.” In some ways, he’s as out of place here as he is at the bar. He’s standing in the middle of the room as though the walls might contract and crush him. May be having second thoughts.

“Have a seat,” Basil invites him. Feeling his own sense of apprehension, now that he’s here, in reach. Outside, a bolt of lightning lances across the city skyline. “Quite a storm,” he says, joining him on the low sofa.

“Yes,” the doctor agrees. Takes a sip of his drink. He’s not quite looking at him, studying a fixed point on his shoulder instead. “A real summer tempest.” He shivers. 

“Are you cold?” He moves to stand, to find a towel or make a retreat, give them both some room, stops when he feels Faraday’s grip on his forearm. His hand is shaking slightly.

“It’s a warm night,” he says. Voice low as he brings Basil’s hand to his knee. He licks his lips, a quick darting of pink tongue. “Very warm.”

Basil cups his knee, for a moment, staring. He can’t parse everything in his eyes right now, gray with want and dread and, perhaps, impatience. He shifts his grip up an inch, then another. Waiting to be stopped. Faraday feels even thinner under his clothes, well-tailored though they are. He leans in, breathing the smell of him, the bite of something herbal, medicinal, under the more ordinary perfumes of sweat and soap. “It’s like that in the city,” he murmurs. “You never know when a big storm will hit.”

“It’s quite—impressive from up here. The lights,” Faraday says. Tilting toward him.

Easy to kiss him, so close. Or it should be. He jerks away at the last minute, turns his face to the side, frowning. “I—I don’t. I don’t like that.”

He releases him immediately, his face hot, heart knocking. “O-oh. I had thought. I apologize,” he stammers. But he had—that is, it seemed so clear. Although he’s not shouting fit to bring the place down, hasn’t, even, moved very far from him. Isn’t accusing him of anything, isn’t threatening him.

“No, that isn’t—“ He shakes his head. Exasperated. “Only, I don’t like to be kissed,” he explains. He flushes, cheeks and ears and neck blooming deep red. His eyes bright but hard. “By men.” 

“I see,” he says. Not sure that he does.

Faraday must recognize his hesitation because he sidles closer, putting his half-finished glass of whiskey on the table. He runs one searching hand up his leg, not nearly as cautious as Basil had been. Squeezes his inner thigh, almost too hard, then reaches for his crotch, grabbing his cock through his slacks just as firmly. 

“ _Ah_ ,” Basil yelps. Or he means to yelp, although it’s breathier than that, weaker, and he shudders under the doctor while he rubs him, steadily, methodical. Almost—well— _clinical._ And he feels it again, that persistent sense of unrest, skittering, out of place. Thunder clatters outside; the windows tremble. Faraday tucks his face against his neck as he touches him, mustache prickling under his ear. He grinds against his hip, stiffening cock prodding him, insistent as he moves. He’s making small, rough noises, soft grunts and snarls against Basil’s damp skin.

He could not have said, exactly, what he expected, bringing Faraday back here. A drink, yes. More conversation. Overtures, tentative at first, then more confident. Kissing. Touching. Eventually, he would have invited the doctor to his bed. Would have savored the contact of another person. He had no particular ideas about the what. But it wasn’t _this_ , fast and somehow callous and almost impersonal. Something closed off, withheld about the doctor now, even as he shudders against his side.

But there’s a warm body pressed against his. A hand stroking him, persistent, relentless, impossible to ignore. He moans quietly, letting Faraday rock against him, letting him feel him. Slides his palm down his back, over his hip, and cradles his ass. It’s fuller than he might have thought. There is, too, the way he groans and presses back into the touch. “Good, yes, very good,” he growls. Reaches for Basil’s fly, unfastening his pants, and—

He startles, grabbing at his wrist to stop him. “Hey, easy. Slow down.” Basil shifts out from under him, pulse hammering. “There’s—a bed. Over there. And. Let me get. Just hang on.” He trips his way to the bathroom, breathing hard. Catches a look at himself in the mirror, how flustered he is, the mess of his hair, his wide eyes, before he retrieves the bottle of K-Y, a condom, and a towel. _What’s happening._  

Faraday is sitting on the bed when he emerges, the privacy screen folded neatly back. He’s removed his jacket, tie, and shoes, and is meticulously unbuttoning his shirt, back straight. As he must do every night.

“Here,” Basil says. Setting his things on the bedside table. “Let me.”

He brushes his cheek, just grazing the smooth skin with his knuckles, but Faraday turns his face away even from that, hissing a breath out between his teeth. “I don’t—“

He withdraws, much as he’d like to caress those full lips, to gently trace the line of his jaw. He sighs. “Relax. I won’t—I'll only. You can do mine, too.”

He enjoys this best in many ways, the gradual revelation of a lover’s body, the slow show of it. He can see the quick, hitching rise of Faraday’s belly beneath his undershirt. The pebbling of his nipples through the thin fabric. The swoop of his collarbone. With someone else, he might have explored these points with his mouth, his hands, but it’s clear Faraday won’t tolerate this kind of attention, so he simply removes his shirt—baring narrow shoulders, freckled arms—and drapes it over the end of the bed.

In turn, he waits while Faraday undoes his buttons and pushes the fabric away from his chest. Those clever fingers, so expressive in conversation, prone to wild gesturing, travel the valley between his muscles; he presses his hand flat against Basil’s abdomen. Flushes and looks away when their gazes meet, as though he’s been caught out. Strips, businesslike, out of his undershirt and, before Basil can delay him, steps free of his trousers and his shorts together. It _will_ be like that then, however he tries to prolong this. He watches as Faraday perches again on the edge of the mattress, naked except for his socks.

He allows himself a moment to appreciate the expanse of pearly skin, long slender legs, and a short, thick, uncut cock, standing ruddy in its copper nest. He reaches for it, meaning to stroke it, but Faraday jerks away from him again, shoulders hunched, head bowed. When he looks back at Basil, his expression is a jumble—hungry and humiliated and almost _angry_ , his blush as deep as ever. A pang goes through him at that, and he sets aside his own shoes, his slacks, his briefs, and his socks, until he crawls naked onto the bed, herding Faraday back against the pillows. The doctor’s gaze flicks down, lingers, taking in the sight of his cock, flushed dark with blood, curving toward him. The pink tip of his tongue flicks out to wet his lips again. 

“Do you want—?” Basil asks. Voice husky. _What do you want?_

“ _Yes_ ,” Faraday agrees, eager, and turns over immediately. Settles on his knees. Ass offered, hips tilted up, balls curled tight between his legs, without prelude or pretense.

He approaches him cautiously. Squeezes his upper thighs in his hands, sliding them up towards his ass and then spreading his cheeks. Admires the pink furl of him before he slicks his fingers. Gently circles his rim before moving to press one of them inside. Faraday makes a soft, helpless noise under him before he tenses, sitting back. “That’s unnecessary,” he snaps.

“It isn’t—“ he starts to argue before the doctor snatches the bottle away and pours a generous quantity over his own hand. 

He twists to jam two fingers into his ass, grunting slightly at the intrusion of it, scissoring and rolling them to distribute the jelly properly. “There,” he says when he’s finished. Curt. “That should be sufficient. If you adequately prepare yourself.”

And he’s almost quivering, strain in every sharp line of him, as he settles back on his knees. Basil can’t see his face, but he can see the flush of his neck, the hard jut of his shoulders, the clutch of his hands in the sheets, not in pleasure, as it should be. _In fear?_ “Look,” he says. “We don’t have to—“

“Just get on with it!” he snarls over his shoulder. Basil sees a flash of green eyes. But Faraday must hear, belatedly, how that sounded. His voice softens. “Please, Basil. _Please_.” 

For a moment, he waits, listening to the sound of rain outside, pattering against the fire escape. He thinks of walking with Faraday at the park. His awkward posture at the bar. How he is here, exposed and desperate, in front of him. The small tastes he’s had of his skin, his touch.

He lets out a breath, then reaches for the condom. Rolls it over his cock before slicking it thoroughly. Takes the time to dry his hands before he grabs Faraday’s narrow hips, adjusting the angle of them as he kneels behind him. He nudges him with his cock, teasing that pink pucker with the blunt head of it.

Faraday whimpers. 

It would be a heartless act, perhaps, to leave him like this. Maybe a kind act, too, to spare them both whatever will follow this terse interlude. It wouldn’t be the first time Basil walked away from someone. Not the first time he should have done and failed either.

He pushes into Faraday, feels him quiet as he spreads him open, pushing inch by inch into the clutching, tense heat of him. The doctor stiffens at the sensation, the stretching; he hisses a breath as Basil sinks into him. He cries out with the effort of it, taking it, even as he pushes back, trying to hurry him. Basil keeps both hands steady, firm, on his hips, holding him still, not letting him rush this. He doesn’t release him when he finally bottoms out, although Faraday squirms against his grip, fighting him, for movement, for friction, too soon.

Finally, he allows him a thrust. A slow withdrawal—almost sliding free, Faraday chasing the contact, urging him back in—and a faster push inside until their hips come flush again. “Ah, _ah_. Damn you.” He sinks onto his elbows. Shaking. “Damn you.” The fury in his voice crumples into something frailer.

Basil eases into a steady pace after that, increasing the tempo gradually despite Faraday’s demands otherwise, the rasped _harder, harder, harder, more, I said_ more, _dammit_ , punctuated with groans and huffs and whines under him, the latter grudging, held, as much as they can be, behind his teeth.

He has never felt so distant during sex, far even from his own body, the sound and the sensation of flesh connecting, the hot clench of Faraday around him, the slipping of sweat over skin. Normally, he would pet him, his sides, the small of his back. Would taste the perspiration beading between his thin shoulders. Would kiss his neck, his hair. Would ask him how he liked it, if he was all right, what he needed, wanted. Instead, he only rocks into him, again and again, these small tendernesses refused, feeling unlike himself, like something Faraday has made him, just a cock and bruising hands on pale skin. It nips at him, goads him, at last, into fucking him harder, as hard as he can. 

Faraday moans aloud at the faster pace, the onslaught wrenching a wet gasp from him, and he slumps, face pressed into the pillows to stymie the noises he can no longer withhold, his whines and cries. His hand works furiously between his legs, as he tries to bring himself off, as fast and rough as the rest of it. How he must always touch himself, hurried, frustrated, maybe ashamed. He comes with a cut-off cry, spurting over his fingers, wailing into the sheets. 

Basil fucks into him one, twice, and then again as Faraday spasms around him. And he’s more grateful than he’s ever been for the blankness, the white-noise of that release. He’s barely aware of Faraday easing off his cock and out from under him, the rustle as he gathers his clothing. Drawing his pants up, his shirt hanging unbuttoned from his shoulders, his shoes, untied on his feet. “You’re—“ Basil says, bemused.

“Going, yes,” he agrees. “It’s late.” Formal again. Polite. The spitting, snarling creature from moments ago banished. The afterimage of it in his raw, pink face, his tousled hair. “I’ll leave you to your sleep, shall I?” He pauses, lingering. The diffidence back, too. “Ah. Thank you. For the—the drink.”

The door opens and closes. Firm. Basil collapses, dazed, onto his own mattress. Suddenly more exhausted than he can remember being. Aching as he comes back to himself. Listening to the rain. Feeling a chill snake over his skin. But it’s probably just perspiration cooling. Nothing like the light tickle of cold fingers. He rests his cheek against his pillow, breathing, unable to clean up just yet. It’s only then that he notices it, moves his hand to trace it: the damp spot on the linen, where Faraday buried his face.

Saltwater, at a guess.

Tears.

 

* * *

 

Basil doesn’t expect to see the doctor again, and for a few days, this proves to be true.

He goes from one gig to the next, as he always has; he plays for his singers and his big bands and for one string quartet. The summer continues, listless in its malaise, humid, dull. Twice, he sits at his baby grand and tries to compose but can only eke out a creeping melody in a minor-key. The third time it happens, he shatters his glass of gin against the brick wall. His sleep is troubled, too. He has dreams, but he can’t remember them, only wakes, shaken and alone.

He thinks of Faraday as little as he can: of his smooth skin, of his quicksilver eyes, of how he’d wept, unseen, while he fucked him as he’d demanded. He takes himself in hand, twice, thinking of him, once about shoving him onto the mattress, fucking him until he screams, and once about kissing, touching him until he relents, all pretenses abandoned, that stony facade cracked, the stopped-up tumult behind it released. Basil drinks a third of a bottle after that, trying to erase it, how good it had felt, both times. He does his best to forget it. Him.

Faraday amazes him by showing up at his door days later, the question clear in his face. “I didn’t—“ he stammers. “That is, I wasn’t certain you’d be at home.”

He pulls him inside without thinking, doesn’t bother to offer him a drink this time, instead fumbling at his clothes, disordering them, snapping his suspenders. He growls, displeased, when Faraday refuses to kiss him again, when he brushes off his attempts to touch him, to hold him. _I came here to get fucked, not fondled_. He only lets Basil direct them to the bed again, the two of them pushing at each other now, nothing gentle in it. Basil takes out his frustrations on the doctor’s ass, fucking him as hard, as mercilessly as he wants while he claws the sheets and quakes and keens into the pillows. He leaves them wet with tears once more, as he scrambles, half-dressed, out the door. As though he can’t bear another moment with Basil. As though this—quick, rough, impersonal fucks—is all he wants from him now.

It becomes, like their previous walks in the park, like his visits to The Pink Slipper, almost expected. Regular, not quite routine, always an unpredictability to Faraday’s visits. Every time Basil swears he’s seen the last of him and they’ll both be the better for it, free of this, he appears again, like a bad penny, intractable as ever about what he’ll accept. What he wants. He’s not kind in asking for it either, resorts to insults when orders, when pleading, fails him. The night Faraday calls him a coward, Basil holds him down, bruising hard, and fucks him until he sobs. 

They barely speak after that.

Weeks pass this way, the summer trudging onward, the anniversary of his father’s death creeping closer, his sleep growing more and more restless, his unshakeable sense that something’s wrong increasing. And Faraday. How cold his eyes are now. The more Basil cedes to his desires, the more removed he becomes. Aloof. Disdainful. As though _he’s_ done this somehow.

The last night, a hot, close night, no hint of relief from rain, Basil has him on the bed again, splayed, on his belly, his legs spread. He grumbles, as always, about his attempts to prepare him, sees it as an excuse for superfluous touching. But even he can’t hold back a hiss when Basil examines him tonight, his hole puffy, raw, red, from overuse. 

“You’re too tender.” He rolls back on his heels. Feeling ill. “I’m not sure you’re not bleeding.”

 _How have you let me do this to you_ , he doesn’t ask. _How have you made me do this to you_.

“Don’t be ridiculous; I’m a doctor. I would know if I were bleeding,” Faraday snaps. Impatient. Then, he always is. He reaches back to slick himself. Winces as his fingers push inside, a thick, pained noise escaping him. Flushes but continues, undeterred.

“S-stop— _stop_ that.” Basil pulls his hand free with a wet sound. Hating the tremor in his voice, but this, it’s _enough,_ and he doesn’t care how he sounds, weak or soft. “I’m not fucking you like this. I’m not going to _hurt_ you. For Christ’s sake, Faraday.”

And with another partner, he would suggest they do something else, would offer to suck him off, or have him fuck him for once, or just kiss and touch and talk. He was the sort of person who did those things once. Enjoyed them, for their own sakes. But this isn’t—he can’t—and that angers him more.

“That’s foolish.” Faraday rolls over, bringing both bony knees to his chest. And he might look fragile, sitting there naked, lips quaking slightly, if not for the gelid look in his eyes, the resentment frozen there. “If you’re not up to the task, you need only say so. I’d thought you capable, but I see I’m mistaken.” And it's clear he means to sound indifferent, unbothered by Basil’s failings, at most _disappointed_ , but he’s never had that degree of _savoir fare_ , and it comes out clipped, spitting, his precise accent splintering between his gritted teeth.

Basil stares at him. It’s been years since he’s allowed himself to be pushed around like this, _used_ like this. Even in prison, even under the government’s thumb, he’d been his own man, followed his principles as well as he was able. Done as little harm as possible. And certainly after that. Never mind that he’s lonely, been lonely, and never mind that he thought—well, he was wrong about Faraday, it’s that simple. He grabs his clothes from their customary place on the bed frame and flings them at him. “Get out.”

Faraday glares at him. “I mean it, Basil, I’ll—“ _Find someone else_ , he no doubt means to threaten.

“I said get out!” If they were standing, he would shove him.

Faraday stumbles off the bed as though he has, expression wild. Confused— _offended—_ then livid, a vein pulsing under his eye. He pulls on what clothes he can before he slams the door; the impact displaces a flurry of plaster.

When he’s sure he’s gone, Basil presses his face into the bed and shouts. He tears one of the pillows—the one Faraday has wept into, that first night and all those since, too many times—in half.

 

* * *

 

The days and weeks that follow leave gray streaks on the walls, dirty the light, settling like a layer of grime over his life. He’s barely conscious of the heat, the sound of the world around him, below him. He startles himself, more than once, with the reflection of his own pallid face in the window, shadowed, unrecognizable, before his eyes adjust and he can look through it, out into the city, the warm, welcome chaos of its lights. He empties his bottles of gin and whiskey into the sink, as he’s learned to do when this mood overtakes him. 

 _But something tells me you won’t find it too hard, in the future, to give up the bottle_ , Gregor had said that last night. 

 _Not quite so, Father,_ he thinks. But he’s trying. 

It isn’t just this business with Faraday that’s unsettled him, he knows. It’s this summer in particular, the time of year generally. It’s, for lack of a better word, _life_ , the half-raveled mess of being alive with the world as it is, unjust and pitiless as it has ever been. These latest incidents, the tension in the city— _Faraday_ _—_ have only served to aggravate old injuries, like shrapnel in wet weather.

He plays the clubs, although he excludes The Pink Slipper for the time being. _Sorry, I overbooked_ , he tells Lloyd. He avoids the park, too, takes the longer routes to the subway, to the deli, to the corner store. He listens to the students shouting in the streets. Eventually, finally, his head clears.

Faraday returns twice—three days and then a week after he kicked him out. Possible he comes when Basil isn’t there, too, but on those nights, he’s home when the doctor pounds on the door and rattles the knob with surprising force, more than he would have expected from such a slight man. The fury behind it startles him, too. “I know you’re in there,” he shouts on the second occasion. “I know you can hear me. Let me in goddammit. _Let me in, I said._ ”

He turns up the radio, an old, crackly Manson, as loud as it will go, and opens the windows wider still, letting in the sound of the traffic below, ignoring Faraday. Eventually, a neighbor tells him to fuck off, threatening to call the police, and he goes away again. 

That should be the end of it. Will be, he decides.

 

* * *

 

A week before the anniversary of his father’s death, Basil has a rare day off. He washes and mends his shirts. Goes down to the grocers. There’s a particular kind of chocolate Carol liked, with candied oranges in it; he buys himself a bar on a whim. It doesn’t sadden him to think about her, her departure more than a decade past. And the thought of her happiness has never hurt him—only how he failed her, never loved her well enough, as she deserved. That pain has abated, mostly, with time. 

He’s humming as he returns to his apartment, sack of groceries in hand. A promising tune, he thinks, the beginning of a new song. He feels better, _calmer_ , good enough, even, to cut through the park, stepping onto the concrete path, the sun pleasant, if hot, on his face, his shoulders. A group of children is playing in the water from the fire hydrant nearby. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice floats through an open window.

Basil would miss him, if not for the hair; he feels a weight sink into his gut when he catches sight of it. He’s resting—no, collapsed—in the dust next to a park bench, curled around a brown suitcase. 

An understatement to say Faraday looks awful, skin slick with sweat and so white it shines, nearly translucent in the afternoon light, the veins standing dark blue underneath, face like wet newsprint. His eyes roll under the lids; the undersides are bruised. Red stubble runs rusty over his narrow jaw. He moans softly as Basil approaches, his shadow falling on him, but otherwise seems unaware, insensible. The once-fastidiously-neat suit is in disarray, a tear at the elbow of his jacket, mud soaked into the knees. He reeks of vodka-sweat.

He crouches next to him. “Faraday,” he murmurs. “ _Faraday_.” He reaches out to shake him. Recoils when he feels the heat of him under his hand. Feverish.

“Basil?” he croaks. Eyes still closed. 

“Faraday, you need a hospital,” he says. Thinking, maybe, he can hail a taxi, ask it to wait, and come back for him. 

“No,” he murmurs. “Please, no." 

Basil shakes his head, although he knows he can’t see him. “Faraday.”

“Basil, please.”

He stares down at him, feels something give in him even before he can acknowledge it, name it. The weak part that has always given, opened the door. Offered his bed, his home, his freedom that easily. _I don’t want this,_ he thinks, as he lifts him—oh so thin and much too warm and shivering hard enough to rattle _his_ bones _—_ into his arms _._ The suitcase comes with him; Faraday’s still clutching it.

He can’t remember it, the tune he was humming, as he starts again towards home.

 

* * *

 

He runs Faraday a bath to begin with, keeps the water warm but not hot, and strips him out of his soiled clothes. And if he was slender before, he’s all but emaciated now, jutting ribs and concave belly. Living, at a guess, on a diet of liquor—and pills, if what he’s heard about doctors is true. He washes him gently, feeling the shift of his bones under his hands: wrists, hips, the knobs of his spine. Delicate. Breakable. Lathers his hair, too, rinsing away grit and sweat. 

“There was a dog.” Faraday whimpers under his ministrations. His eyelids flutter, lashes quivering. “A black dog. Bit the girl. Her face. C-couldn’t do a damn thing for her face.”

“Never mind that,” Basil tells him, lifting him out of the tub. Patting him dry. 

“Didn’t bite anyone before, she said. Years and years. But that night it did.” He lets Basil blot the water off him, leans against him, unresisting. “Y’know what they said? Thank god there was a doctor here. Thank god. But I didn’t—I didn’t.”

He doesn’t know the combination on Faraday’s suitcase, so he puts him in a pair of his old pajamas, too loose on him. It’s been an age since he’s had to dress someone other than himself; he struggles to maneuver him into the faded shirt and pants. He’s no help at all, still rambling. “It was a black dog.”

He’s tucking him into bed when Faraday sits up abruptly, grabbing for his collar, pulling him close. His eyes are glassy, unfocused. “It was so quiet when it died. When I—She wept for it. The dog. A quiet death, it had. She died—she died quiet. Not a peep.”

Basil doesn’t know how to answer this, so he only loosens his grip on him, smooths his hair with his free hand. “You should rest,” he tells him. Draws the covers up to his chin. And his face doesn’t ease in sleep, not fevered as he is, but it is—unguarded. Naked in a way it hasn’t been before, even in his most candid moments. A face he’s tried to hide. His brow furrows; he mutters, twitching, wincing. 

Basil brings his hand from the crown of his head to his cheek, stroking the sharp line of bone there until he subsides.

He goes about the rest of the day like this: cook dinner, check on Faraday, tune the piano, check on Faraday, finish the laundry, check on Faraday. There’s an easy sort of rhythm to it, and simple enough to keep an eye on him from across the room besides. He falls into a deeper slumber after the first hour, no more cries, no more disturbed ramblings. It’s not until the sun dips behind the buildings and the city’s skyline begins to blink to life that he grows restless again, thrashing against the blankets, struggling with unseen assailants. “Stop—stop that!” he orders. “It’s nothing, there’s _nothing_ , you must stop.”

Basil crosses the room to quiet him; he catches his flailing hands and holds them still. “Easy, _easy_ ,” he says. “It’s only a dream.” 

His eyes open slowly; the awareness comes back into them as he does. “Basil?” he asks. Confused. “But I—what am I doing here?”

“I found you in the park,” he explains. “You’re quite ill.” He goes to fetch some water from the kitchenette. “Here, you should drink this. I’ll make you some tea.”

“That’s—kind,” Faraday says. Gulping the water. Although he averts his eyes when he finishes.”Thank you. For your help. I can’t think you must have wanted to—after—But I’m sure I can manage. It’s probably just a summer cold.” He moves to climb out of the bed before he swoons, falling back against the pillows. 

He shakes his head. “You’ve a temperature. And you were delirious. Earlier. Raving.”

Those keen eyes, even fever bright, narrow. “Raving? What about?”

“Nonsense, mostly. As you’d expect. Something about a dog? It had bitten someone.”

It seems impossible that he should be able to blanch, bloodless as his face is, but he does, lips going white. “I will, I think, rest here a few hours more. If I may impose on your generosity further.” 

He waves him off. “As long as you need.” Trying to sound nonchalant. Not like the sort of person who would offer, pleading, to drive his criminal father to the Mexican border, after—well, after everything.

Maybe he succeeds.

“That’s kind,” Faraday repeats. Swaying now. “You’re kind.”

“Here, you should rest more,” he says. Propping the pillows behind him. “I’ll wake you when the tea is ready.”

“Too kind.” His eyelids are drooping.

“I always was,” Basil says, quiet, as he leaves him.

Later, he holds him upright, one arm braced around his shoulders, as he drinks his tea. Gives him two tabs of paracetamol at his direction. _Doctor’s orders_ , Faraday laughs weakly before he swallows them. He falls into shallow sleep after that, dozing, mumbling through his dreams, Basil stretches out on the sofa, a quilt spread over him, the low chatter of the radio filling the flat, and the sounds of cars, passersby on the streets drifting through the open windows.

He’s only vaguely aware of his own dreams—running through all of them, he has the urgent sense of needing to be somewhere he isn’t. For Gregor, for Carol, for Faraday, for his employers, for the guards at the prison, for the patients at Bellevue during the war. Gregor sends him away the last time, saying he doesn’t need him, that Basil can’t do anything for him. He kisses Carol on the cheek before she boards the train to California. He sees Faraday’s face, reflected in the photographs at the bar, and then it vanishes.

He jolts awake, unsure of what’s roused him, to see Faraday, not some half-glimpsed specter but the man, here, real, of flesh and blood, standing over him, so pale in the darkness. “Are you—“ _okay_ , he tries to ask.

But the doctor pushes him back against the sofa, pressing against him, his skin, his hands hot, too hot, eyes dark and glassy. Basil groans as Faraday slips one hand under his shirt, the other under the waistband of his pajamas, and as he writhes, grinding on his thigh, needy, wanton. There’s his lips, too, plush and rosy red, seeking Basil’s, bumping along his jaw, and the wet flick of his tongue and that— _I don’t like to be kissed. By men_ —kicks him free of what’s happening, of those insistent hands, that eager mouth. “Faraday,” he protests. Trying to move him off without hurting him. 

“Just give me a chance, darling, won’t you,” he’s saying, groping, still, between Basil’s legs, at his chest, still trying to bring their lips together. His eyes terribly blank. “One more chance. I can do it, I can please you, not like in the car, let me show you, please. I’m trying, I promise. It’s not—it’s not what you think. I’m not—I can—“

“ _Faraday.”_ He grabs his wrists, shaking him gently. “Wake up.”

He comes back to himself with a small convulsion, and, seeing where he is, what he’s doing, scuttles backward and off of Basil, almost stumbling and falling to the floor. He drops to a crouch, instead. Covers his face with his hands and pulls at his hair, rocking slightly. “Oh, Basil. Oh, oh—forgive me, please.”

“It’s nothing—it’s fine.” He clambers off the sofa, to his feet. Shakes off the feeling of Faraday’s lips on his skin. Even fever-dry and cracked, they were soft. He reaches for him. “Here, let me help you back to bed.”

“The bells were ringing, but no one had called,” he murmurs, as Basil settles him back under the blankets. 

He strokes his hair again, messy, fluffy from being freshly washed, un-styled. Doesn’t kiss his warm forehead. “Get some rest.”

“It was only mice,” Faraday tells him. Drifting off. “Mice in the pipes. Nothing to fear.” 

 

* * *

 

He stays quiet after that, the night passing without further incident, but Basil doesn’t find sleep again. He watches the dawn come blue, then gray through the windows. He has a lunch shift to play in midtown, and he rises well before he needs to, drinking cup after cup of coffee, trying to throw off the clinging film of the night before, clear it from his eyes, his thoughts. He plays, softly, an old composition of his, which never sold. Startles when he looks up, finding Faraday's watching him from the bed. 

“That’s a lovely tune,” he says. Voice hoarse. 

Basil doesn’t answer, only goes to get him more water. He sits on the edge of the bed while he drinks. Faraday’s as waxen, as ashen-faced, as he was yesterday, but his eyes are clearer. “We were going to be married,” he says, once he finishes. “The woman who died. I had asked her to marry me. Caroline.”

And it’s only a coincidence, of course, two women with similar names, common names, not so unlikely, but the echo chills him. Just one more uncanny thing about this man, how they’ve collided, by chance.

“She called it off—not long before. She. That is—she didn’t love me, she said. She never had. She didn’t want—“ He shakes his head. Lips trembling, and not with fever. “I imagine she knew. Or she thought she knew. What I am.”

Basil reaches out to touch him, grasping his shin, just below his knee, stilling him. “You don’t have to.” _Tell me this._

“No, it’s—I should. After last night. You. I thought maybe I could—do away with it. I tried. A time or two. In London. I wanted to prove her wrong, I suppose. I don’t know.” He laughs. Or perhaps it’s more of a cough, dry, rattling. Humorless in either case. “It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t what she wanted, regardless. And I am what she thought. I am exactly that.”

Unsurprising, the loathing in his voice. 

“Did you love her?” It’s an unkind question, perhaps, but he can’t but think of Carol when he hears of this other woman, Caroline. What she’d needed from him. What he couldn’t give. Not because of his inclinations; he had wanted her plenty. Something more fundamental than that. His character. 

Faraday considers this, frowning. “After a fashion,” he decides. “Yes, I—I believe I did. I tried to. I sometimes thought if she—if she were more of what she was meant to be, I would have. I could have—better.”

Basil squeezes his leg before releasing him. “I have to work,” he tells him. “Will you be all right here, today? On your own?”

“Of course. What harm could come to me here?” He laughs again, and this time it does shatter into a full cough, a harsher, wetter sound.  

The afternoon passes in a haze; he couldn’t say, after, what he plays or how well, although no one complains. An elderly woman in mink frightens him when she approaches to request a song.  Something about her hands, he thinks, after he’s calmed himself. Like claws. Although, they’re ordinary enough when he looks again, covered in white gloves. But it’s only that he’s exhausted, he knows, the restless night. Faraday’s story, his ramblings, and the rest of it. He needs to sleep, that’s all. 

With his unlikely charge in mind, Basil stops at the Jewish deli to buy soup on his way home. Feels, again, that particular sense of dread, a creeping at the back of his neck, as he climbs the stairs. It’s a hot day, sunny, but the building is unnaturally cool. His key clatters in the lock when he opens the door, his hand shaking. A glance confirms that Faraday is in bed, sleeping soundly, intact. _Of course. He's fine._

He lies down for a nap, letting his exhaustion take him. His sleep, today, with the dusty sunlight coming into the room, empty of dreams.

He wakes abruptly, disoriented, in the evening, to near-darkness, the sun sunk behind the buildings. When he checks, Faraday is sitting up, staring at the wall. It’s clear even at this distance that he’s shaking. Is muttering to himself, something Basil can’t catch at first. “That isn’t. It’s not _possible_ ,” he’s saying.

“What is it?” he asks. Blearily. Scrubbing at his face. He staggers over to him, squinting at where he’s pointing at the wall. It’s almost too dark to see. But it’s there, scrawled in an ungainly, childish hand. The letters smudged in places, almost illegible. Mostly, the letter _S_ and what might be a _u_ or a sloppy _i,_ he can’t say. 

“This can’t _be_ here,” Faraday’s almost moaning. 

“It’ll come clean,” Basil tells him. Not understanding, although the sight of the writing sends a prickle of fear through him, the same way, he thinks, the woman’s hands did earlier. But they’re both tired, Faraday still feverish, warm, as he tries to coax him to lie down. “It’s nothing. You must have done it in your sleep.”

“I _didn’t_ ,” he insists. “I wouldn’t.” He lapses into another coughing fit. 

“It’s all right. Here. Come lie down again. I’ve brought soup.”

He passes another fitful night after that, writhing under the covers, too hot one moment, his teeth chattering the next. A normal fever, he knows, and lucid, Faraday himself would say as much. But he’s incoherent, shouting about fire, about the books burning, and fighting off, again, invisible attackers. Once, he cries out to Caroline, pleading with her. Another time, he calls for his mother—no, not _asking_ for her, as Basil had heard men calling for their mothers in prison, at the hospital, but begging her. Asking for her mercy, saying he was sorry, so sorry, for harming the house, he wouldn’t do it again, he promises, he promises, he promises.

Basil does his best to calm him, shushing him, bringing him more tea and water; he encourages him to eat the soup. He dabs his brow with a cold compress, smooths it over his cheek, his neck. It means nothing, of course, when Faraday relaxes into it. When he takes Basil’s wrist, holding it, thumb moving idly over the veins in wordless thanks.

They both sleep late, almost into the afternoon, the day after. He isn’t sure if he remembers his own dreams or what he heard of Faraday’s. Recalls the sensation of cobwebs on his face. Being led through a murky house, the shadows as heavy as water, and there were faces in the hallway mirrors, watching, staring, their mouths open, working, fish-like, accusing. 

The third day passes much like the second. Basil bathes him again, hoping the water will lower his temperature; Faraday clings as he dresses him in clean clothes. Afterward, he goes to play Café Society, relieved to lose himself to the piano, to the sound of the band, no one watching just him, something comforting in anonymity, in a crowd. The writing has crept up the wall when he returns, filling more of it, the spines of the S’s increasingly frantic, slashing. He looks for a pen or a grease pencil around the bed, in Faraday’s hand, but finds nothing.

He’ll wash the wall, he thinks, when he’s no longer tired. When this is over, whatever’s happening, if it ends. It must eventually.

Faraday, at turns, wavers between coherence and delirium. He explains, quite logically to Basil that it’s best to send him away, that he’ll be better cared for in a facility, that it’s a common reaction to trauma, so many men after the war suffering the same. He’ll handle everything. He’ll look after it, after them. He’s a friend of the family now, after all. _Trust me,_ he exhorts him, hands clutching at his shirt. The same night, he rants, incensed, insisting that he didn’t know, he didn’t know why she would have done that, she was disturbed, they were all disturbed; it was in their minds; it was catching, catching, how could it be _catching_. He finally falls unconscious, more comatose than asleep.

Basil nicks himself shaving the next day, the blood slipping down his cheek until he dabs at it with a towel. His father wouldn’t recognize the man in the mirror, so much older, although Carol might. She had a knack. He’s getting questions, at work, concerned, about whether he’s quite well. The weariness in his eyes. Something in his face, too, his expression harried—hounded. He goes to The Pink Slipper on Thursday night, resumes his place at the upright piano. Keeps expecting to see Faraday over his shoulder, or reflected in the glass, watching him. Always pensive, hesitant, but more than that. He still hasn’t seen all of it, he thinks, everything that lives, lurking in his eyes.

Basil plays late, not making his way home until almost three. The neighborhood pulses around him. Someone laughs too loud on the corner. A cat slinks in front of him, nonchalant. Voices are singing, drunken, in the park. Expected, all of it, familiar. He almost forgets, almost relaxes into it, how well he knows it, this place where he’s made his home, the life he’s chosen, how he belongs to it and it to him.

He doesn’t understand the scene, at first, when he opens the door, not entirely. The parts of it are clear: Faraday kneeling in the middle of the room, suitcase flung open at his side, possessions scattered around him, encircling him, clothes and books and papers and framed photographs. He’s cradling one of these in his lap, a heavy silver frame. Glass shines on the floor, snatching the light, glittering. There’s red. Red spilling over Faraday’s hands. He’s bleeding.

The blood on the bedroom wallpaper, his father’s blood, had been muted, brown, an unidentifiable stain, by the time he’d seen it. This is bright, wet. Very red. Spilling out over his hands.

Basil stumbles across the room and drops to his knees in front of Faraday, taking his bloody arms in both of his. “Careful,” the doctor cautions. He’s wide-eyed, staring, shockingly awake. “It’s quite sharp.”

“You’ve hurt yourself,” Basil says, dumbly. Faraday’s blood runs hot onto his skin as he bends to examine the wounds. Lacerations crisscross his palms, the undersides of his fingers.

“I didn’t mean to,” he’s explaining. Grabbing his hand, blood slicking his grasp, sliding over Basil’s skin. “I only meant to. The mess. I didn’t—it’s not like her, like them. It was an accident. I wasn’t—I wouldn’t—“

“We need to get this cleaned up,” he tells him. Pulling him up by the elbows, leading him into the bathroom, carefully, guiding him around the broken glass. “You might need a doctor. I can—I’ll call one.”

“I _am_ a doctor,” Faraday reminds him, although he submits to having his hands washed. Winces as Basil lathers soap and massages it into the cuts. “It isn’t deep,” he observes. Detached. “Shouldn’t need stitches. Likely it won’t scar. Hardly worth the trip.”

He wraps the wounds at his direction, binding the bandages as tight as he says. Faraday ties them off himself, tugging the knot snug with his teeth. “I’m a poor patient,” he apologizes, as Basil leads him back to bed, helps him change clothes, the others stained. 

“I hear doctors often are,” he says. 

“It’s true.” He chuckles, hoarse, before his expression darkens. “I didn’t mean to do it,” Faraday tells him again, fingers curling around his arm. “I wouldn’t do that. Mrs. Ayres—she did. And Caroline, they said. But I wouldn’t.”

“It’s all right,” Basil says. “You’re all right.” 

Trying to reassure himself, too.

 

* * *

 

He cannot bring himself to leave after that, can imagine too clearly what might have happened, if he’d been later, if Faraday had nicked a vein, what he would have found. (He didn’t find Gregor—his father had arranged that, too—but he dreams about it, if he had.) He calls in every favor he’s owed, covering his shifts for the rest of the week. “You needn’t trouble yourself so,” Faraday says, when he’s managed it. But also, “Thank you.”

It’s the last lucid conversation they have for the next two days, as Faraday’s overcome by fever and hallucinations. He sits bolt upright, holding stilted conversations with people who aren’t there, droll pleasantries and long, uncomfortable silences intact. His accent slurs between its near-perfect intonation and something almost unrecognizable, unpolished. He shudders and stares when he sees the writing on the wall. Claps his hands to his ears, complaining about the ringing, about voices in the walls. Worst of all is when his temper turns, usually in his sleep: how he shakes the bed with his fits, beating at the bed, the force of it. _It was meant to be mine_ , he bellows. _It should have been mine. I deserved it,_ I _did, they never have—they never cared like I did. They let it all go to ruin, squandered. So useless, so fucking_ careless, _and I would have. I would have cared for it_.

 _It’s not fair_ , is all that amounts to, a sentiment Basil recognizes, how he felt when he turned eighteen, when he saw his life, his father for what they were. The injustice, how he’d wanted to strike out, to harm the thing that hurt him. 

It’s impossible to restrain Faraday during these episodes, although he tries, tries to hold him still lest he do himself some real injury. He’s disturbed by how he arches off the bed, the veins standing out in his face, his neck; pale eyes bulging; spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth. The face of a madman, a rabid dog. It’s a reprieve, a strange blessing, when he collapses, spent, body wracked with coughing, with shakes. 

He should call a doctor. Would, if he only knew how to describe what was happening, something more than a fever, deeper than an ordinary infection, perhaps incurable. He's swept up at the glass and replaced Faraday’s things in his suitcase, but he keeps the photograph, the one from the shattered frame. Studies it, a black-and-white image of a large, old house, children and adults in their Sunday best standing in front of it. Just after the Great War, at a guess from their clothes. He’d been a child then, too, a boy who loved his father and didn’t know any better.

“Hundreds,” Faraday moans in his sleep. “Hundreds Hall. You should see the state of it. A terrible waste.”

The twitching starts again, the struggle against the bedclothes, the beating of his fists, like a child in a tantrum, red-faced, howling. Basil, too exhausted, finally, to hold him still, sinks down next to the bed, slumped. Faraday’s rage vibrates through the mattress and the metal frame against his back, such that he can feel it in his own clenched jaw, his own balled fists, and he can’t say how long this fit lasts; it’s endless, his rage, his self-righteousness, so betrayed, until it isn’t, until it ceases, all at once. 

He makes an animal noise then, low and wounded, and Basil reaches for him, taking him into his arms, as much as he can, half-sprawled across the bed. “It was only an acorn,” Faraday pleads, face wet against his neck. He’s sobbing now. “Isn’t this enough, isn’t it too much—for that. I only wanted a piece. Just a piece.”

That goes on, too, for a time, until he falls to gentler, softer weeping. Basil finds sleep that way, arms around him; peaceful oblivion sinks over him, a refuge in his dreamlessness, as he leaves the sound of his cries behind.

It’s quiet, too, when Basil wakes, neck and shoulders aching, and it’s that _absence_ that brings him out of sleep, fast, panicking, the now-familiar sounds of Faraday’s ranting, his wails, his whimpering stopped. When he looks up, the bed is empty, the blankets thrown back.

He stumbles to his feet, searching the apartment in an unsteady spin. He’s about to rush out into the hall when he sees it: the red-orange glow of a lit cigarette on the fire escape. 

Basil approaches the window, cautious, and finds Faraday sitting out on the stairs, his knees drawn up like a boy’s, bandages wrapped thick around his hands. “I thought to put you to bed properly,” he says by way of greeting. “But I wasn’t sure how to manage it without waking you.” 

It’s difficult to tell in the dark, his features shadowed, but his voice sounds very clear. Raw, yes, but cogent. Basil only waits, watching him, uncertain.

“I was just admiring your city,” Faraday continues. Conversational. And he hasn’t sounded that way in weeks, the shy doctor who walked with him in the park long since replaced by other, more terrible men. “It’s beautiful, all the lights and people. One might never be lonely, in such a place.”

“You can manage it,” Basil tells him. “Loneliness, even here.”

“Surrounded by people? I imagine that’s true.” His mouth quirks, rueful. “Yes, I suppose I know exactly what that’s like.”

“Would you like to come back inside?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, as though Basil hasn’t spoken. Little more than whispering. “Wondering. Whether it’s possible—would you say?—for a place to get into a person. Crawl into your lungs. Change how you breathe. What you think. Who you are.”

He frowns, studying him, unsure if this is another stage of his fever. Although it sounds different. The question sincerely posed. “I'd say,” he muses. “Anything can come to define us. A place, a person, a moment.” Thinking, again, of Gregor, how even by becoming everything his father wasn’t, even doing that, he’s been trapped in him, determined by him, even now. He shakes his head, looking out at the city with Faraday. Doubting any of this makes sense, the musings of two fractured souls, a pair of cracked mirrors. “I think people feel that way about this city. That it’s a part of them, I mean. But that, it doesn’t—it needn’t _harm_ them _._ They’re part of it, too. It's an exchange. _”_

He nods, enthusiastic. “That’s what it is. Belonging to it. And vice versa. That’s what it’s supposed to be.” He falls silent again. Exhales a long stream of smoke. Looks down into the swimming lights.

“Would you like to come back inside?” Basil repeats. 

Faraday startles. “Oh. Yes. Thank you.” He accepts his hand through the window, climbs shakily across the frame, leaning against him for support after. “Pah. I’m like a week-old kitten.”

“You should sleep.”

“I’d like a bath first, if it isn’t too much trouble,” he suggests. “I’ve sweat right through these, I’m afraid. This heat.” 

He should change the bedclothes, too.

“All right,” he agrees. Helps him into the bathroom, steadies him as he strips out of his pajamas, stale with fever-sweat, and climbs into the tub. Means to leave him to wash, give him some privacy, but Faraday grabs his arm, stopping him. 

“I haven’t the right to ask a damn thing of you, I know, but if you would—“ He indicates the washcloth, the soap, as well as his bandaged hands. Sighs, letting out a held breath, when Basil capitulates, kneeling by the tub and taking the cloth. 

He dips it into the suds, lets the water run over his back, his thin chest, and it’s the last time, of course, washing him, tending to him this way. It’s derailed his life, all that’s happened— _he’s_ derailed his life—and it’ll be the work of months to recover, to not look at a bottle and want to drain it, but still, there’s something calming about this, caring for someone this way. Not the raving and everything else, but this. Surprising as it is that Faraday is allowing it, has  _asked_ him to, his expression guarded, almost wary, as he watches Basil. 

“There,” he says, when he’s finished, scooping water to rinse away the last of the soap, moving to stand. “Done—“ His only warning is a small splash before Faraday’s hand, scratchy with gauze, curls around the back of his neck, under his hair and draws him down, clumsily, jerkily, to bring their mouths together.

The impact of it bruises at first, but it’s not a rough kiss, Faraday’s lips giving, soft, pliant, under his own, his nose nudging his cheek, the tickle of his facial hair—mustache, mostly-grown beard—against his skin. He arches up into him, seeking Basil even as he retreats, whining at his absence when they part. It’s only a temporary separation, however; he sinks back to his knees, reaching for him again at a more comfortable angle, Faraday’s skin slippery under his hands, as he wraps his arms around him, heedless of the water.

Once, he might have thought Faraday would be a hesitant kisser, but he isn’t—pressing enthusiastically back against Basil, making dozens of small, expressive noises against his lips, until they’re almost buzzing with it, whimpers and mewls and, when Basil nips his lower lip, a groan. Not like how he had sounded in bed before, grudging, trying to hold back, every grunt and moan a concession he resented making. These—this—it’s freely offered, Faraday opening up for him so easily, so eagerly it seems impossible.

“I want—I wanted,” he’s saying against Basil’s mouth. Fervent. “I’ve wanted this.”   

He deepens the kiss in response, cupping his head with one hand, letting his thumb rest, gentle, over the base of his throat. Unhurried as he can make it, only giving up his mouth to press his lips against his jaw, under his ear, down the side of his neck. Taking as much pleasure in his breathed, “ _Oh,_ ” as the taste of him under his tongue.

He lets his free hand dip into the water, tracing the topography of his ribcage, the hollow of his stomach, then lower. Feels Faraday twitch under him. “Is this—“

“ _Yes_ ,” he hisses. Lifting his hips. “Yes, please.”

He brushes over his cock with just the pads of his fingers, learning the texture of his skin—soft—and the shape of him, the weight. Everything he wasn’t allowed before, still almost expecting Faraday to slap his hand away, to growl at him, to turn his face, to say again, _I don’t like to be kissed. By men._ _I’m here to get fucked, not fondled_. Instead, he tightens his grip on Basil, circling both arms around his neck and pressing closer, clinging as though he might drown. He muffles his cries against Basils’s tongue as he begins to stroke him more firmly, to twist his wrist just so.  

It doesn’t take long or may require an hour, he isn’t sure, lost in the sensation of it, Faraday squirming under these attentions, kicking small waves across the tub, whining into his mouth, his hands tangling, now, in his hair. Basil's holding him around the shoulders with his free arm, cradling him, until he comes, biting at his lips and yelping. 

He lets him back down after, pulls free of his lax grip to straighten, finds his shirt practically soaked, his knees aching, and doesn’t mind. He pets his wet hair, watching him recover. An inconsequential thing, on the face of it, what’s just happened between them, considering everything else they’ve done, everything they’ve endured together and from each other, as short and graceless as an adolescent fumbling. But there’s also the way that Faraday leans into the touch, chest heaving as though he’s run ten blocks, the limpid gray-green of his eyes, unclouded by other worries, other fears. And as unexpected as any of it: how he grabs Basil’s hand, presses a kiss to his knuckles. 

Perhaps more predictable, that he reaches for his fly, then his cock. Unsubtle. Basil shies backward, away from the touch. “Later,” he promises. “Whatever you like. But for now you—you ought to rest.”

He offers a dozy smile. “I feel I’ve been sleeping for months. Years, even.”

“Sleep just one night more,” Basil tells him, as he helps him out of the bath. “You’re very nearly well.”

His mouth tilts. “Am I?”

He deposits Faraday, dressed in his own night things now, on the sofa while he pulls the tacky sheets off the bed. He’ll need to do the washing again. And there’s still the wall to clean, the stains to get out of the floor. But he feels lighter, easier than he has in weeks, and never mind that it’s tomorrow, the anniversary of his father’s death. He’s survived something, he feels. Somehow, they both have, have weathered the long night. 

When he turns to Faraday again, to put him into the freshly made bed, he finds him asleep on the sofa, knees draw up, eyelids twitching but otherwise quiet. He spreads the quilt over him. Falls into the bed himself, listening to the susurrations of the city through the open windows until he drifts off.

 

* * *

 

It’s already a bright, sweltering day when he wakes, the sun coming full force through the windows, the room free of whatever grayness it’s held these past weeks, months. He exhales, squinting at the room, his sense of unease diminished, too. Thinks of Gregor, unearthing only muted sorrow, well-worn regret, like an artifact from another life, closed in an attic trunk. He’s startled, abruptly, by the sound of the key in the lock, the door opening.

It’s Faraday, a sack of groceries in his arms. Freshly shaven, hair neatly combed, suit pressed. Some of the color back in his face, flushed, too, from the summer day. He ducks his head, bashful, when he sees Basil. “Good afternoon,” he says. Somewhat awkward.

“Hullo,” Basil replies. Still squinting. He scrubs his face. 

“I didn’t know what you preferred—“ He takes the food to the kitchenette.

He shakes his head. “That’s—thank you.” He studies the room. “You cleaned the wall.” Every _S_  scoured away.

“And the floor,” Faraday adds. “The least I could do, after. There’s, ah, a trick to getting out bloodstains.” At his questioning look: “Comes with the territory. I learned as a student. Too poor to have my laundry taken out.” This said with some of his old discomfort, like it should be a joke. Also like he hates it.

“What were you like—back then?” He’d been an activist at school, like the young people now, so sure of his ideals. So much time spent shouting in squares, listening to eloquent men and women. He doesn’t miss those days exactly, although they had been simpler in their way. He doesn't regret them either. 

“Oh, I was terrified.” He smiles, wryly. “I worked night and day. The smallest failure was intolerable. All I wanted was to prove myself.”

“I expect you did. Prove yourself, that is.” Basil smiles back. Thinking of every would-be doctor he’d known back then. What he would have made of Faraday, if they’d met. Studious and so serious, but less brittle, perhaps. Bearing fewer slights, fewer disappointments.

He clears his throat. “Would you like something to eat?”

“Did you learn to cook in school, too?”

“Poorly, I’m afraid.” 

They spend the afternoon that way, somewhat hushed in the way they speak to each other, tentative, waiting to see that it’s wrong, that they’re not safe with each other. If this is only a temporary reprieve. It is, in a way, like trying to recognize a false dawn, the lightening of the sky misleading, suggesting the end of the night before it’s come. It is, too, like those early walks, and he finds himself thinking of Faraday’s hair in the sunlight, everything he didn’t understand about him then.

They eat a cold supper together, talk continuing in stops and starts. Afterward, Faraday asks him if he might play a little. “I heard you. When I was unwell. A time or two, I think I followed the sound of it back here, odd as that sounds.”

 _No odder than anything else these past few days_ , he thinks, as he sits down at the piano. He can, with this attentive audience of one, play whatever he likes, his own songs. Gregor had asked if they were good, that last night; he never asked to hear them. Carol heard them often enough, of course, and every neighbor he’s ever had, but this—this is different. He can feel Faraday’s eyes on him as he begins to play, the way he had at The Pink Slipper that first night.

He’s surprised to find the last song is one he doesn’t know, not the eerie melody that had troubled him for weeks, not the song that eluded him in the days when Faraday returned, not any half-written composition he recognizes. This is something else, something not quite mournful, melancholic, like a walk through the city at twilight, like the gray light in winter, like the sound of footsteps in an empty house. When he reaches the end of it, he sits, hands unmoving. Feels the last note resonate through him, low, lingering. Unable to identify this last peculiarity. It’s like something has exhaled, loosened its grip, let go, dissipated at last.

Faraday moves to stand behind him, not touching him for a long moment. When he does, his hand comes to rest between his shoulders. His fingers travel up his spine, to the nape of his neck, and sink into his hair. Basil allows him to tip his head back, gentle. Shivers when he leans down to kiss him, lazy, openmouthed. 

It’s a short journey to the bed, Faraday tugging him forward, hands in his shirt, guiding him on top of him as he inches back across the mattress, and Basil goes, his knees bracketing the doctor’s hips. He looks down at him, the pink swell of his mouth, hair falling loose over his forehead. Leans down to lace their fingers together, gently, avoiding where he cut himself before. Presses his arms over his head. Tastes his mouth again, the tremor of his pulse-point, the soft underside of his chin. Begins to undress him, taking his time with it, undoing his buttons one by one, Faraday abiding this, watching him, clear-eyed, patient.

They’re careful with each other, as though they’ve never done this before. In some ways, perhaps, they haven’t, Basil thinks as he works open Faraday’s trousers, reaching in to touch him, to bring out his cock, savoring the needy noise he makes in response, the way his hips jerk upward. More so, when he pulls back his foreskin, ducks to take him into his mouth. Licks at him until he’s fidgeting under this treatment, head tossing against the pillows. “Oh, that’s—oh. Basil. That’s—that’s too much.”

He eases off of him, moving to the top at the bed at Faraday’s urging, accepting the flurry of kisses he gets in response, frantic, messy. 

They kick out of the rest of their clothes, rumpling them in their effort to get at each other, restraint abandoned. It isn’t like their previous encounters, quick, too direct, almost vicious, nothing curious or tender about them. And Basil didn’t anticipate it, how Faraday would touch him if he could, if he allowed himself, inquisitive, searching, mapping each part of him under his hands. A surgeon’s hands. He finds himself shaking from it, heat pooling in his belly as his cock fills. Faraday turns his attention to it. 

He makes a frustrated noise, hindered by his injured palms, unable to grab it properly. He skirts his knuckles down the side instead, tracing the big vein, grazing the underside, reverent.

“I’d like—“ He swallows. “I’d like you to fuck me.” Eyes plaintive. “Please.”

Basil nods. Retrieves the K-Y and a condom from the bedside table. Stops him before he can turn over. Arranges the pillows for him, sliding one under his lower back. Slicks his fingers, touching him slowly, carefully, tracing his rim. Faraday exhales, waiting. His cock lies heavy, pink on his stomach. It twitches when Basil presses one finger inside. He feels him clench around it, impatient. Shushes him, _hush,_  while he takes his time working him open. Understanding that this may be the last time, in a sense the only time. He adds another finger, curling them, seeking.

Faraday grabs his hand, not pulling it away, instead adjusting the angle for him. “I think you’ll find, yes, it’s right here— _ah!”_ He jolts, hips spasming upward, reflexively. 

He laughs, moving away from that spot, thrusting his fingers more shallowly, sparing him. “You’ve never—never been touched there before?”

“Basil, you must know by now that no one’s touched me much at all,” he mumbles, red-faced. 

And that sobers him, so much so that he crawls up the bed to kiss him again. Sighs, pleased, when Faraday wraps his arms around him, then his legs, one bony ankle pressing into his ass. Laughs again when he grinds against his stomach, demanding. “Okay, okay.”

He hurries in his own preparations, rolling the condom on and coating himself quickly, before settling between Faraday’s splayed knees. Doesn’t tease him this time, rather guides himself inside gradually but steadily, hearing his quiet hiss as he fills him, inch by inch, until he’s fully seated. Holds himself there, looking down at him, the flush spreading over his sternum, the hard, pink points of his nipples, the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. “Lovely,” he says. And it’s impossible to miss how his eyes flicker, the minute shake of his head. “So lovely.” He leans down to kiss him, sloppy, as he begins to move, feels Faraday gasp against his lips.

He sets a steady rhythm, by no means slow, pushing into the clutching heat of him. Caresses his face as he does, his sides, the smooth skin of his thighs. Sees the first tears slip down his cheeks, one and another, until they’re falling steadily. He brushes one away, wondering at it. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, yes. _Ah._ Yes, it’s only—it’s in-involuntary,” he says. As though Basil has accused him of something. He moans into another kiss. “Would you—just, a little harder, please. I—oh. I’m nearly there.”

And obliging him, he curls his hands under his knees, tilting his legs back, thrusting deeper, harder, the two of them groaning together as he does, rocking him back into the bed, his mouth falling open, face wet. Basil shifts one hand between him to stroke him, working him in time with his thrusts. Faraday comes with a soft cry, head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, as he splatters his own stomach with white. Basil fucks into him for a moment more before following, hips stuttering, legs and arms shaking until he can’t hold his weight up anymore.

He returns to himself with the sensation of Faraday stroking his hair, the plane of his shoulders. Murmurs an apology before rolling off him and onto his back. Is surprised when he follows, curling against him, and resumes touching him, petting the side of his face. Nothing assured about the gesture. Halting, unpracticed. But for that—especially for that fact—he takes his hand and kisses his fingers. 

He couldn’t say what he expects after they clean up. Maybe to go back to the sofa, sleep separately. Maybe for Faraday to take his leave, as he always has after, as he must eventually, this only an interlude for him. Instead, they crawl back under the covers, lying together in the dark, and he accepts each of the doctor’s shy touches, his embrace as stiff, as inexpert, as all the rest.

It’s this way, huddled together in the dark, that he tells him about Gregor, really tells him, not the sparse information from the press clippings, not the fictions from his biographies, not the myths invented by the man himself, but how he had seen him, how he had known him, and that last night, what had happened. Faraday listens, not speaking except to ask an occasional question, to express his terse disapproval of his stepmother’s “bought” title, and finally to exclaim, softly, “That’s abominably cruel,” when he relates the scene in his apartment that night. And there’s little comforting about him, about Faraday, but the _attempt_ at comfort, the hand ghosting down his side, the clumsy way he nuzzles at his jaw—it helps in its own way.

“That was fifteen years ago,” Basil laughs. Bile in his throat. “And sometimes it’s still all I can think about. I hate him, I hate him for trapping me in that. I hate him for everything he did.” Although somehow, he’s never managed to hate him properly, fully, not enough. “That’s pathetic, isn’t it, to have one night, one event affect you that way?”

He feels more than sees Faraday shake his head, his hair tickling under his chin. “Isn’t that all there is? Just different moments that lodge in us, making us who, what we are.” He shakes his head again. “I’m no philosopher. But it doesn’t sound so absurd. To me.”

He thinks of their conversation on the fire escape, how it had seemed like nonsense, how it had also felt _true_. He doesn’t know what he means to say now, only that the question bursts out instead: “What’s your name? I mean, your given name. You’ve never said.”

“Oh,” Faraday says. “It’s Simon.”

“Simon,” Basil repeats. Teasing out the shape of it. The beginning sibilance, the ending compression.

“I’ve never cared for it,” he confesses. “And most people don’t ask. Caroline never—well, I’m quite out of practice hearing it. I think my mother was the last person to use it. I’m Faraday to everyone I know now.”

He can only hold him closer at this admission, hearing the isolation of it, hollow. Faraday tenses at his embrace, then relaxes into it, sighing.  

“My middle name is Henry, for my mother’s brother,” he volunteers, after a silence. Suggests, as though he’ll have a reason to, as though this isn’t the last time they’ll talk this way: “You could—you could call me that. Henry. If you like.”

 

* * *

 

They continue whispering late into the night, making no plans, offering no professions, just telling and retelling those stories, the ones they can’t let go. Just listening, at times, to the city outside, holding each other, not knowing what will happen once they stop, part. Just before dawn, Basil rolls Faraday onto his back. Licks and sucks at his cock until he comes, biting his own knuckles, trying to stifle his moans with his fist. He watches, eyes starving, as Basil touches himself after, the taste of him still on his tongue. Shocks his orgasm out of him when he bows his head to take his nipple between his teeth.

It’s still early morning when Basil emerges from the bath, the night’s exertions scrubbed from his skin. Faraday is standing by the piano, a sheet of paper in his hands. Or no, not paper. A photograph. _The_ photograph from the night he cut his hands. Spots of his blood dried brown onto the paper.

“They’re going to condemn it, you know,” he tells Basil without looking at him. “After everything, they’ve declared it unsound. Not worth saving.”

“It means something to you,” he says. Coming to stand next to him. Wanting to put a hand on his shoulder. Not quite daring. “This place.”

Faraday shakes his head. “It was everything. It was all I wanted—I. I would have done anything to have it. I still may.” _I don’t know that this is over, that it’s well and truly past_ , he doesn’t say, but there’s the dread of it in his voice. 

He had been burning with it, Basil thinks, recalling how he had bellowed, had thrashed.

“That’s why—why they said I should take some time. They said it was grief, that it was to be expected. They thought, well. They thought it was for her.” He looks away. “It was, perhaps, in a sense. But not—not _only_ , you understand.”

 _Will you go back_ , he could ask. _You could stay_ , he might offer. He does neither, only watching Faraday. The loving look on his face as he studies the photograph, how it mutates into sorrow, then fury, his eyes sparking. He clenches his hands around the thick paper, twisting it. Breathes out, hard, through his nose. Stalks to the little kitchenette, lighting one of the burners on the stove, before shoving the photograph into it. 

It blackens and curls immediately, blue flame creeping across its edge. When it’s all but consumed, Faraday drops the smoking remains in the sink, staring into it.

Neither of them speaks.

Eventually, he comes to stand next to Basil again; together, they look out through the apartment windows, watching a hazy September sun clamber into the blue-gray sky. The city has shifted into morning outside, is beginning its transformation into autumn, too, waiting for no one and nothing, as it never does, unknowing of silences, of stillness, untroubled by unanswered questions. The cooling air an exhalation, an ending. It’s not a quiet place, not an easy place, but the cacophony of it becomes a background din. Familiar, as part of the landscape as the buildings, the avenues, the ever-moving crowds. 

One more soul, even a country doctor with restless eyes, a ticking jaw, the shadow of a crumbling house lingering in him, would mean little in the grand scheme. Whether he stays or leaves affects nothing, not in the city’s eyes. It is consequential only to the man next to him. And this moment, the two of them standing there, Basil’s arm coming to wrap around Henry’s waist, drawing him close, it matters not at all. It isn’t one of those moments, the ones that stick in you, the ones that persist, that change everything—

That haunt. 

If you let them.

**Author's Note:**

> About the implied suicide: Both _The Little Stranger_ and _Man and Boy_ contain apparent suicides. Neither of them is depicted explicitly here, even in flashbacks. Faraday does injure himself in a way that is reminiscent of one; however, he's not attempting self-harm.
> 
> The homophobia is expressed only in the way the characters (especially Faraday) feel about themselves. There are no slurs used in the story, neither is there homophobic violence.
> 
> If you want to read this, but are worried about either of these points, please get in touch! I'd be happy to make this a safe reading experience for you. ([tumblr](https://callmelyss.tumblr.com)).
> 
> —
> 
>  **Update** : Now with [ART!](http://katiesghosts.tumblr.com/post/178956962369/i-was-commissioned-by-callmelyss-to-illustrate-a) Commissioned from the wonderful and talented [Katie's Ghost](http://katiesghosts.tumblr.com).
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


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